CDW 2003 Annual Report Download - page 9

Dear Shareholder:
The year 2003 was one of launching new initiatives for CDW and 2004 will likely entail more of the same.
Our primary objective is to remain the leading multi-brand technology direct marketer in the United States,
while continuing to take market share from our competitors. We accomplished that in 2003 and we intend to
continue to do so in 2004. Let’s first review our actions and accomplishments for the year just ended and
then we’ll discuss our plans for the current year.
We made a bet in early 2003 that appears to be paying off. As you may remember, in our January investor
call to discuss fourth quarter 2002 and full year 2002 results, we made a simple pronouncement:
“DAMN THE TORPEDOES, FULL SPEED AHEAD.” In the midst of a continuing U.S. recession, with
the tech industry doing even worse than the U.S. economy in general, we announced our intention to grow
our sales force from 1,320 to 1,470. In fact, our sales force grew 46 percent to 1,924 by December 31, 2003,
as we will discuss. We held a strong belief that tech spending would rebound as we progressed through the
year and that the recession would be over by year-end. Fortunately, both situations occurred.
Next, we reorganized the corporate sales sector to substantially increase our presence in the “field.”
We patterned this initiative on the model that we have been building in our public sector subsidiary,
CDW•G, using both the traditional inside sales force as well as our in-person, outside sales force. We now
have approximately 90 field sales representatives across the country calling on high-potential corporate
and public sector customers.
In addition, we revamped our entire sales training program to better prepare new account managers
and further segmented the sales divisions in both our corporate and public sector sales groups. Finally,
through the acquisition of certain U.S. assets and the Canadian operations of Micro Warehouse, we grew
our sales force by 413 account managers and product specialists—in addition to our 191 net new sales force
hires throughout the year—while bringing a significant number of new customers to CDW. I must add here
that having made nearly two dozen acquisitions in my business career, I have never seen a team integrate an
acquisition as quickly and as flawlessly as Team CDW.
As a result of our 2003 initiatives, along with the significant efforts
of our corporate staff and distribution center coworkers, we are
experiencing double-digit growth as the recession ends and
tech spending increases. We are well positioned for continued
significant growth in 2004.
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CDW 2003
Front row (l-r): John A. Edwardson, Barbara A. Klein.
Second row (l-r):
James R. Shanks , Christine A. Leahy, Douglas E. Eckrote .
Third row (l-r):
Harry J. Harczak, Jr. , Jonathan J. Stevens,
Arthur S. Friedson , Diane I. Primo.